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Startup strategy is like Kung Fu. There are many styles that work. But in a bar fight, you’re going to get punched in the face regardless.
I can only teach you my style. Others can only teach you theirs.
This is my style.
"MVPs" are too M to be V. They’re a selfish ploy, tricking people who thought they were customers into being alpha testers. Build SLCs instead.
I don't like freemium; I want to learn from people who care enough …

The data show that the two most common causes are (1) the product just isn’t useful to enough people and (2) problems with the team.

But what about the cohort that dies even though it did sell some copies of software to a few people, and where the founding team isn’t dysfunctional?

I don’t have data for that cohort (tell me if you do!), but informally I see things like the following, which is useful to list because there’s a pattern common to each of them, which furthermore is possible to counteract

Idealistic founders believe they will break the mold when they scale, and not turn into a “typical big company.” By which they mean: Without stupid rules that assume employees are dumb or evil, without everything taking ten times longer than it should, without wall-to-wall meetings, without resorting to hiring anything less than the top 1% of the talent pool, and so on.

Why do they never succeed? What are the fundamental forces that transform organizations at scale?

Though inevitable, change is uncomfortable and exhausting. Even we who relish change, who love bragging that “it’s hard but every day is different,” reach a breaking point after years of adaptation and fake-gleefully exclaiming that “failure is how you learn!” Yeah, but all this learning is fricking tiring.